Today's Internet has a number of search engine sites (SESs) that offer users that visit an SES the ability to search via the Internet or, more accurately, to search through data about information available on the Internet that previously was collected by the SES. This is accomplished by the SES providing the user's browser with a webpage that contains one or more text boxes that allow the visiting user to populate with a search query. When the user clicks on a designated control element (or one of a number of control elements), the information within the text boxes is sent to the SES, the SES searches through its database, and returns to the user's browser a response web page. The web page typically contains a list of items, and each item contains a visible portion and a hidden portion. Normally, the hidden portion is a URL of a website (or merely the IP address) that is responsive to the search query in whatever sense the SES concludes to be valid, and the visible portion is some text that describes the website (and also typically presents the URL as part of the text).
More often than not, the number of links in the list of items that is created in response to a query is large, so the SES constructs a first response web page and presents it to the user. The user has the choice of selecting one of the links in that webpage, or requesting another web page from the SES which would contain other links that are responsive to the query. The question of the order in which the links are sorted in order to present to the user in the first, second, third, etc. response pages presents a quandary (or challenge) because users often do not peruse through the entire list represented by the collection of different response web pages. Therefore, to the extent that web site want to be selected, those web sites that are included in the first response web page, and particularly at the top of and/or at the bottom of the response page, have an advantage over those web sites that are included in the second response web page, and the latter have an advantage over web sites that are included in subsequent response web pages. In connection with later web pages, again, those that are displayed at the top and at the bottom of the page have an advantage over the ones in between.
Some SESs order the list of links by a measure of probability that the SES establishes relative of the relevance of the item to the search query. That is, those SESs apply an algorithm which determines that some items are considered more responsive to the query than other items, and the more responsive links are given a higher probability value and are placed higher (earlier) in the list.
At least some of the SESs transformed this challenge into a business opportunity by introducing the notion of presenting responses in two groups: websites that are responsive to the search query and which are “sponsored” websites, and websites that are responsive to the search query and which are not sponsored websites. The sponsored websites are given preferential treatment in that they are displayed more prominently (such as at the top of at the bottom of a response webpage), and in return for the more prominent treatment the owners of those websites typically pay the SES for each time a user clicks on the owner's sponsored link. This imposes a need for the SES to know each time a sponsored link is chosen by the user, and that is accomplished by the SES modifying the hidden portion of the sponsored items in the list that it presents to the user in response to a query. Specifically, rather than specifying the URL of the link, the hidden portion of the sponsored links contains a code that is sent back to the SES when a user selects a sponsored link. The code identifies the link to the SES, which allows the SES to direct the user's browser to the appropriate URL of the selected sponsored link. It also allows the SES to account for the fact that a sponsored link was selected by the user, and get paid accordingly.
While it appears that commercial considerations would drive an SES to show as many sponsored links as possible (thereby increasing the chances that users will click on a sponsored website and thus increase the revenues garnered by the SES), the SES also has an interest in having users perceive the SES as a fair and impartial entity that responds to a search query with results that are not tainted by the commercialism associated with sponsored links. It is important, therefore, to strike a proper balance.